Today is Batman Day – the day in which we celebrate Batman’s triumph over evil, again. It seems Batman keeps on saving the world (or Gotham, at least) at least once a year, and yet the baddies just keep on streaming to his doorstep. While frustrating, this fact does not discourage the Bat-fans, who flock to the comics stores to celebrate one of the most renowned heroes of the day.

Sadly, they almost completely ignore the real heroes of our times: people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg who have pledged to give at least half of their fortunes to charity, along with more than 135 other billionaires who have signed a similar pledge.

Bill and his wife Melinda alone have pledged over $30 billion to various charities, and have founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which continually gives out grants and monetary assistance to demolish poverty, hunger and disease worldwide. Warren Buffett has pledged a similar amount of $30 billion to the Foundation as well. According to an infographic from 2012, the Gates’ generosity has saved almost six million lives by brining vaccinations and improving healthcare internationally.

So why is it that we view Batman in such a high esteem, while pretty much ignoring Bill, Melinda, Buffett and other billionaires?

To understand the reasons we need to go back in time, and view history in the form of waves, as noted futurist Alvin Toffler have done in his book from the 1980s – The Third Wave.

A History of Waves

In his (highly recommended) classic, Toffler has described two waves that have swept over humanity and have created new civilizations. The First Wave was the one that replaced hunter-gatherer societies with agricultural ones. The Second Wave was the Industrial Revolution, which has led to standardization and centralization of manufacturing and governance. And the Third Wave, which we are experiencing right now, is leading to the creation of the post-industrial society, in which wealth is measured in information, and not necessarily in physical products (to understand that, consider that Google is making approximately $30 billion just by selling and rerouting information).

The interesting thing about those waves is that while people change their lifestyle, their consciousness and culture remains largely ‘stuck’ in the previous waves. In fact, we all still firmly adhere in our mentality to the era before the agricultural wave (the First Wave), when the heroes and top-guns were the chieftains and the hunters. And what distinguished them? They had big and bulging muscles, and were largely the macho types, competing constantly among themselves over who’s stronger.

In other words, they were largely the archetype of all comics, anime and manga superheroes.

We see the affection for the big and macho types in many other places. Jared Diamond has described in his masterpiece Collapse, that Australians still view the cowboys and lone farmers with great affection and as the “ideal Australians”. Similarly, a soldier from the Marine Corps is enjoying a far greater prestige than a cyber-hacker, despite the fact that the latter is almost certainly more influential. The same applies to military unmanned aerial vehicles controllers, who are being ridiculed by the ‘real pilots’.

In other words, we are all still mentally fastened to an era that precedes even the First Wave – more than 10,000 years ago. The principles of that time, which are largely in contradiction to the way the world works today, include –

• Might: Brawn over brains;
• Materialism: Materials (food, money in your hand) are more important than information (money in your virtual bank account);
• Wholeness: Individuals and groups are valued by the work they do themselves, while those who outsource labor are considered lazy or money mongers.
• Cleanliness: Occupations that deal with ‘dirty’ jobs, like cleaning human excrement or handling the garbage bins on the streets, are considered much less prestigious than most other occupations – even though they may be high-earning professions, and certainly important for society wellbeing.

Leaving the Past behind Us

Can we leave our evolutionary history behind us, and move forward to a more progressive future? I believe we can. Our brains may be largely wired in the same way they were 10,000 years ago, but we have a large advantage over nature: our consciousness and ability to essentially rewire our own brain just by thinking and comprehending new ideas.

My friend Yaron Assa demonstrated how we can transcend our old ways of thinking, in a lesson he gave in my course about foresight and forecasting. He showed the audience two lines, and asked them which is longer (you can see the challenge below). Everybody sniggered, and told Yaron that both lines are just as long – and that it’s an old and well-known visual illusion. To which Yaron calmly explained that they have just now proved that human beings can recognize their biases – even ones based on the brain’s wiring and visualization systems – and overlook them, if only they know about them in advance.

I believe we can put the past behind us. Not completely, of course, but largely so. We’re already on that path right now. Many of our best comics superheroes turn out into geeks: Hank Pym (Antman) and Bruce Banner (the Hulk) are brilliant scientists, Tony Stark (Ironman) is a super-engineer, Batman is constantly re-engineering his equipment, and so on. So maybe we’re beginning to overcome the idea that brawn overcomes brains.

In summary, we can leave some of the past behind us, but before we do that, we have to recognize just how much we cling to it. So while you’re celebrating this Batman Day out there with your capes and gloomy looks, don’t forget the real heroes of our times – the ones who are not macho, who don’t have bulging muscles, and yet like Batman they largely hide behind the scenery and do the dirty work that nobody likes to think about.